Rupert Murdoch: Guilty of willful blindness

News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch / AP

(MoneyWatch) COMMENTARY In a damning report, the U.K. parliament's Culture Committee says that Rupert Murdoch is not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company. Why? Because the chairman of News Corp. exhibited "willful blindness" to what was going on in his empire. Last July, I argued that Murdoch was guilty of willful blindness in his failure to see how pervasive phone hacking had become in his organization, in his refusal to investigate it, and his refusal to acknowledge what other people found. Now, it appears, the legislators agree with me.

This is a saga from which every leader could, and should learn. Because willful blindness isn't just a character flaw; it is a structural trap that lies in wait for anyone in power.

UK lawmakers: Rupert Murdoch unfit to lead News Corp.

My book, "Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at our Peril" shows that willful blindness has been with us for a long time. It emerged in Victorian time as a legal concept that argues that when there is information we could have, and should have, but somehow manage not to have, we are nonetheless responsible. While most often used to prosecute cases of money laundering and drug trafficking, it was used most sensationally in the government's case against Enron CEO Jeff Skilling and Chairman Ken Lay. The phone hacking scandal is the media's Enron moment.

The key driver of Murdoch's blindness has been power. Power encases its recipients in a bubble. Some of that bubble has a physical reality: encased in limousines, private jets, and hotel suites, very powerful individuals rarely inhabit the same world as the rest of us. Moreover, academic studies have shown that those with power are more optimistic, more abstract in their thinking, and more confident that they're right. So mentally they're in a bubble too.

But perhaps most potently in Murdoch's case, powerful people can't escape a structural trap: those who hold power are surrounded by people who tell them what they want to hear and hide from them what they imagine they don't want to hear. On one level, this is not personal; it afflicts everyone. Ambitious executives want to please their bosses -- so they deliver the good news and bury the bad. It's assumed that conflict is undesirable so anything that might provoke it mysteriously disappears. Leaders themselves need do nothing to encourage this: the ambition of those around them is enough to ensure that they are surrounded by smiling bearers of success stories.

Murdoch isn't the first and he won't be the last to be caught in this power trap. John Browne, when he led BP, was famously ensnared in it, blind to the dangerous operations which led to accidents and fatalities. His later, rather bromidic memoir, acknowledged as much: "I wish someone had challenged me and been brave enough to say: 'We need to ask more disagreeable questions.'"

The truth is that it takes individuals of terrific integrity and fortitude to resist the willful blindness that comes with power. Tony Blair didn't. Richard Fuld didn't. James Cayne didn't. John Browne didn't. And now the Culture Committee concurs: Rupert Murdoch didn't either.

[Liberty_in_MA]

I'm so surprised that all the left wing media outlets pounced with affection all over the comments of a bunch of socialist parliamentarians who took time away from their busy social commitments to condemn the lone contrarian in the news business. Of course, that was only after they blamed him for forcing them to court him over the course of their careers. How does that work anyway? These British pols grovel on their knees and suck up to NewsCorp so that they can get free press, then they claim that they were forced to do it and then condemn NewsCorp for publishing their brain droppings? Anyone take a look at NewsCorp stock today? Anyone take a look at the ratings of FoxNews against all their liberal and progressively biased competitors? The people have chosen by virtue of their viewing habits and the numbers don't lie my friends.
What we're seeing now is the last exhaustive gasps of the petrified and dying left wing press; bitter and resolute in its conceit.

[hope4agape]

You should have studied the 1st and 5th ammendments to the constitution. That is the freedom of the press and that no one be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.
A report from a political committee with 4 conservatives and 6 liberals . The 6 liberals say murdoch is unfit and the 4 conservatives disagree. This "culture Comitee" is not a court of law, nor a finder of fact.
But in your blind eye, siding with the liberals you would deprive with out due process and kill the freedome of the press.
Is it a wonder we free Americans look at your writings and shake are heads . Like WHAT ARE YOU THINKING ?

[margaretheffernan]

Willful blindness doesn't have any political preferences. It is strictly non-partisan. We all ignore, minimize and trivialize information that doesn't fit our idea of ourselves. When we build organizations, they behave just the same way. it takes much conscious and deliberate effort to build into corporate governance the oversight and independence which shareholders deserve.

[joannow]

It is becoming more and more obvious that the mega-wealthy, no matter how much they have, want more and want it without anything, including laws, or just respect for other people's privacy, getting in their way. He has more security than the President because he is a "private" person. So are the rest of us but his lack of concern is narcissistic. I believe the man has several personality defects. Most of the time their money is enough to pay off whoever needs paying off to obtain anything they want-that's called corruption. This man who has everything has nothing because he has no character, no morals and is dispised by several countries.

[qmpash]

Blindness???? He was the author. Who can believe this was the work of an underling?